
TWINKLY EYIS 
AT VALLEY FARM 


FT MEPDE 
GenCol1 


ALLEN CHATTEL 








































































































































































































































































































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Twinkly E^cs encounters Bobby Lynx 













TWINKLY EYES 

AT VALLEY FARM 

The Adventures of 
a Little Black Bear 

• 

BY 

ALLEN CHAFFEE 

Author of “The Adventures of Fleet Foot and her Fawns,” 
“Trail and Tree Top,” “The Travels of Honk-a-Tonk,” 
“The Adventures of Twinkly Eyes, the Little 
Black Bear,” “Twinkly Eyes and the 
Lone Lake Folk,” and “Lost 
River, the Adventures of 
Two Boys in the Big 
Woods” 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

PETER DA RU 


1921 

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 








- 

Copyright, 1921, by 
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 


All rights reserved 





MAY 27 1321 



©CI.A617333 


C/ 




PKEFACE 


Wien Twinkly Eyes, the yearling cub, 
visits the sugar camp once too often, he finds 
himself in a trap, and the Boy from the Val¬ 
ley Farm takes him home. The little black 
rascal manages, however, to pass the time by 
getting into 57 varieties of trouble, from dig¬ 
ging up the seed potatoes to stealing a hot 
pie from the window sill. But of course he 
is never really happy till he wins back his 
freedom. 

Not that the little bear is the only old 
friend we meet. There is Unk Wunk the 
porcupine, and Bobby Lynx, and Frisky 
Fox, and other Lone Lake folk, to say noth¬ 
ing of Mother Black Bear and the wee new 
cubs, and the Traveling Showman’s dancing 
bear, and Chet-woof, the cross old bear of 
the neighboring range,—yes, and even a 
herd of dinosaurs,—that played leading 
parts when Twinkly had a nightmare. 

3 


4 


PREFACE 


The tale was written partly to amuse, and 
partly to interpret the dumb world to the 
vocal, and picture the unfolding minds of 
these little brothers of the wild, with their 
plant lore, their weather wisdom, and their 
place in the scheme of things. 

But it is the author’s hope that,—when 
you have seen how all but human is the little 
black bear, how like a primitive backwoods 
boy in fur, mischievous, enterprising, cour¬ 
ageous, affectionate, industrious in finding a 
living, intelligent in reasoning out the 
meaning of all he sees about him, how valu¬ 
able, as well, to forestry (catching more 
mice and other woodland pests than a man 
could, working on a salary),—shall we not 
agree that our Ursus Americanus deserves a 
better fate than that of being hunted like a 
criminal? (Would that the staunch spirit 
imprisoned within his furry chest could 
speak for itself—just once!) 

He deserves, at the very least, a closed sea¬ 
son, when for a few months his life is not 
in constant peril. Our black bear of the 
East,—the cinnamon bear of the Sierras,— 


PREFACE 


5 


is never dangerous to man, save of course 
when man has first tried to murder him. 
He will, it is true, defend his life or that of 
his cubs. (And when wounded by one man, 
he will sometimes blame the next comer for 
his attempted assassination.)—But where 
he is protected all the year around, as he is 
in the National Parks, this could never hap¬ 
pen. On the other hand, it is one of the rar¬ 
est delights of visitors to the Yellowstone, 
Yosemite and such places to be able to watch 
these dusky forest folk without hostility on 
either side, and even sometimes to play with 
them. 

Certainly the sportsman will find it more 
fun to hunt them with a kodak than with 
trap and gun. And no child who has ever 
had his hand licked by a fat, little, puppy¬ 
like bear ever will want to hurt him. 

Allen Chaffee. 









CONTENTS 


CHAPT1H 

I 

Big Bears and Little Bears 



PAflE 

. 9 

II 

In the Nick of Time . 



. 15 

III 

A Joke on the Hired Man . 



. 19 

IV 

Surprises. 



. 27 

y 

The Trap. 



. 34 

VI 

An Ungrateful Guest . 



. 38 

VII 

A Great Find. 



. 43 

VIII 

Twinkly Eyes Repents . 



. 48 

IX 

Thomas Also Repents . 



. 54 

X 

“ Safety First !” . . 



. 57 

XI 

The Mystery of the Berry Pies 


. 64 

XII 

Worse Than a Porcupine . 



. 70 

XIII 

Luck for Fatty Chuck . . 



. 74 

XIV 

Twinkly Eyes and Trouble 



. 79 

XV 

The Dancing Bear . 



. 86 

XVI 

A Fight for a Friend . 



. 93 

XVII 

The Escape. 



. 99 

XVIII 

In the Berry Patch . 



. 106 



































































































































V " 






















































































- 


























































































































































































TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY 
FARM 


CHAPTER I 

BIG BEARS AND LITTLE BEARS 

T WINKLY EYES, the little black bear, 
had been exploring on the far side of 
Lone Lake. 

Here, where the forest fire had swept sev¬ 
enteen years before, was now a tangle of 
wild blackberry vines, with blueberries, 
high-bush and low-bush, covering the slopes 
in patches of ripening purple. 

By reason of their southern slant, one hill¬ 
side had ripened earlier than the rest. 
Twinkly was just settling down in the midst 
of a clump of bushes where he could paw in 
great, juicy mouthfuls, when a deep rum¬ 
bling growl sounded close behind him. He 
swung about, startled and ready to defend 

9 


10 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


himself from the unseen menace. It was 
Chetwoof, the big bear of the neighboring 
range, who had approached noiselessly on 
his huge padded feet. 

“Sir, you are in my berry patch!” he 
growled, rising to his full height, with paw 
upraised ready to punish the small intruder. 

Now, Twinkly Eyes, the yearling, was no 
coward, but he had good common sense, and 
one look at the big bear towering so far 
above him was more than enough. He re¬ 
treated like any other small boy caught pil¬ 
fering a neighbor’s garden. Only, “I 
didn’t know it was yours,” he apologized as 
he ran. 

Had it been a full grown bear who had 
dared invade the other’s territory, he would 
have met with a different reception. But a 
big bear will of course not fight a cub,— 
though neither will he allow any cubs but his 
own on his range. (But all this is under¬ 
stood in bear-dom. Twinkly Eyes had told 
the truth when he said he didn’t know it was 
Chetwoof’s.) 

The late spring sunshine lay warm in the 



Bluff and Boxer began to fight 




















BIG BEARS AND LITTLE BEARS 


11 


open places, and the air was musical with 
the sunset songs of birds. Krek the pheas¬ 
ant cock was drumming on a hollow log, in 
his desire to call the world’s attention to his 
handsome plumage. Down on Lone Lake 
the little black ducks were puddling sociably, 
otters were diving in the trout pools for 
their suppers, and Baldy the eagle was try¬ 
ing to make the fish hawk drop his catch. 

He could see Mother Black Bear knee- 
deep in the riffles as she waited, claws out¬ 
spread, as still as a log, for a fish to come 
swimming by. The two new little black 
cubs were sitting on the over-hanging bank, 
their chubby legs stretched out before them 
in a fat Y, as they watched her. 

Twinkly, thinking to leap out and startle 
them, was tiptoeing softly through the brush 
behind them when his foot loosed a stone. 
It rolled down the bank, first striking Bluff, 
then Boxer, ere it came to a standstill in a 
little hollow. Each cub blamed the other 
for the mishap, and the pair began to fight, 
while the real malefactor’s little black eyes 
twinkled more than ever. 


12 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

A spank apiece from Mother Black Bear 
settled the dispute, and insured good be¬ 
havior,—at least until the next time. Then 
she tossed a particularly fat old trout up the 
bank for herself. 

The wee cubs were not weaned yet. But 
the fish was a pretty, wriggling thing, and 
both cubs longed to play with it. Bluff 
made cautiously as if to steal it from 
her, whereupon he received a cuff that sent 
him sprawling. While Mother Black Bear’s 
head was turned the other way, he made off 
with the fish, and it was only after repeated 
commands—spoken away down in the 
depths of her throat—that he decided he had 
better return it. 

“Silly things!” Twinkly told himself. 
“Always getting into some kind of trouble!” 

But at this moment, as he ambled quietly 
away, the ribbon of the breeze brought to his 
nose the odor of ripe blueberries,—and this 
time he knew he was on the home range. He 
proceeded to follow his nose, which was 
much sharper than his eyes. It led to a 
birch-bark pail brimming over with the 


BIG BEARS AND LITTLE BEARS 


13 


great ripe berries from one of the south- 
slanting ranges. That same brainy nose 
told him that a boy’s hand had held that 
berry pail, but it also told him that the boy 
himself had gone. 

Five minutes later the last luscious berry 
had disappeared down the greedy red throat. 
—Then a crackling of the underbrush sent 
him scurrying. 

The Boy from the Valley Farm, returning 
for the berries he had left when he stopped 
to fish, gazed, mystified, at the empty pail! 

Now Twinkly Eyes had been watching the 
man cub (as he called the Boy), likewise 
the Hired Man from the Valley Farm, who 
carried the black thunder-stick. For the 
yearling cub had paid many a delightful 
visit, in the dead of night, to the sugar camp 
over in the maple woods. 

At the memory of the boiling sap, half 
sweet, half pungent, his mouth watered, and 
he licked his chops regretfully.—-Yes, he 
had paid many a visit to the sugar camp that 
spring, and many’s the narrow squeak he’d 
had from the Man with the gun. Always he 


14 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

had escaped by some fox-like manoeuvre. 
But now it was all over. The sap no longer 
ran into the birch-park pails, nor boiled in 
the huge iron kettle that had hung from a 
chain over the glowing coals. The last visit 
had rewarded him with but a few licks at the 
sweetened places where syrup had spilled on 
rocks and fallen logs. 

(But the Hired Man had never ceased his 
effort to catch the little black bear.) 


CHAPTER II 


IN THE NICK OF TIME 

A BSOLUTELY without warning (for 
the pit had been cleverly made), 
Twinkly Eyes felt the ground give way be¬ 
neath him. 

Crashing through a mass of boughs and 
leaves, down, down, down he went, to the 
bottom of a hole so deep that, as the mass of 
rubbish came tumbling in on top of him, he 
felt as if he were buried. 

The scent of the Hired Man’s hands could 
still be detected on the broken boughs, and 
the little bear knew whom he had to thank 
for his mishap. 

My, how furious it made him! How he 
clawed and scrambled to get out! But the 
pit was a deep one, and as fast as he found a 
foot-hold it crumbled beneath him. 

To make matters worse, the sky now be¬ 
gan to flash with lightning, and the moun- 
15 


16 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

tain peaks resounded with the roll of thun¬ 
der. Twinkly Eyes had always been afraid 
in a thunder storm (though Mother Black 
Bear had tried hard to make him see the 
folly of it), and he was the more frightened 
now that he was helpless. 

The pelting rain that followed made it 
even harder to gain a foot-hold on the steep 
sides of the bear-pit. Some sixth sense 
warned him that he must win free, or the 
man would come and find him at his mercy. 

But as if the little prisoner were not al¬ 
ready quite miserable enough, the down¬ 
pour began to fill the bottom of the pit with 
icy water. Twinkly shivered,—more with 
fright than cold, but still, it was getting 
mighty uncomfortable down there. It is 
one thing to plunge into sun-lit waters for a 
swim, and quite another to have to stand in 
water up to your shoulders.—(For it was 
soon neck deep in the narrow pit, what with 
the rivulets that came draining down from 
the rocky hill-side into it.) 

Then he remembered something that 
Mother Black Bear had once said to him: 


IN THE NICK OF TIME 


17 


“When you’ve hit bottom, you’ve no farther 
to fall,” she had told him. “So when mat¬ 
ters get their very worst, they can’t get any 
4 worser, ’ can they ?—And that means they’re 
bound to get better.” 

(Mother Black Bear had in mind that un¬ 
der the spur of disaster, one calls upon one’s 
most valiant efforts,—all one’s hidden pow¬ 
ers,—to turn the tide of ill fortune.) 

Meantime the water was rising fast. Now 
it was up so high that he had to keep his 
muzzle pointed skyward to keep from drown¬ 
ing. A little more, and it would be clear 
over his head, he told himself despairingly. 
He really wished now that the Hired Man 
would come. Then at least he could put up 
a fight for his life.—Now he was helpless. 

But was he?—His guardian spirit must 
have whispered: “How about your good 
old motto, 6 Never say die till you’re dead’?” 

Then, as always when danger seemed upon 
him (provided he stopped to think), an idea 
came to him. It was now deep enough to 
tread water,—and although the pit was too 
narrow for regular swimming, he could keep 


18 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

right on treading water, couldn’t he? That 
would at least keep his nose above-board. 

Thunders rolled: lightnings flashed: and 
tree-tops swayed in the veering wind. 
Deeper and deeper came the water in the 
bear-pit,—and over on the shore of Lone 
Lake was the huntsman who would come in 
the morning to see what he had caught. 

But Twinkly Byes kept treading water in 
the well his pit had become, while the swell¬ 
ing rivulet filled it to the very brim. 

Ceaselessly he paddled, not daring to stop 
for an instant’s rest for fear he should sink 
and drown. His legs ached with fatigue. 
How much longer could he keep it up ? 

As suddenly as it had come, the storm was 
over, and a misty moon began peeping 
through the parting clouds. Twinkly gave a 
gasp of surprise. For with the filling of his 
pit, his head had risen with the water level.— 
He had risen clear to the top!—He could 
reach the rim! 

It took him less than half a minute to 
scramble out of his strange tank and race 
from the scene of his troubles. 


CHAPTER III 


A JOKE ON THE HIRED MAN 

W HEN the little bear awoke from his 
afternoon nap, it was dark, and the 
dew had damped the grass. He had an un¬ 
easy sense that trouble threatened. 

6 ‘ What is it ? ” he asked himself. 11 There 
isn’t a creature in these woods that would 
hurt a bear, unless it was a bull moose in a 
fighting mood; and then I don’t believe he’d 
hurt me if I kept out of his way. Besides, 
one doesn’t see a moose once in a coon’s age. ” 
But some sixth sense, (the sense of things 
about to happen with which wild folk are 
endowed), kept whispering: “Danger!— 
Danger is near!” 

Twinkly shrank back noiselessly into the 
deeper shadows, and held his breath to listen. 
Sure enough, there was a snapping of twigs, 
—now faint and far away, but coming 

19 


20 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

nearer. The little bear edged still further 
into the concealing brush. Now a shift in 
the moist night wind brought to his nose a 
taint. He sniffed warily. Was it the man 
with the gun ?—His lips drew back in a voice¬ 
less snarl, and hot rage filled his breast. 
Then the sounds drew away again, and down 
on the shore of Lone Lake a tiny flame 
sprang up. 

It had been like that at the sugar camp,— 
always a fire when night came. But of 
course this might be only the little man-cub, 
who was entirely harmless. 

Twinkly longed to rush down and make 
sure. But that sixth sense,—or was it the 
spirit of some great-great-grandfather, who 
watched him from the starry heights of the 
Happy Hunting Grounds :bade him be¬ 
ware. At any rate, he lost no time in putting 
several miles between himself and the mys¬ 
terious camp-fire. 

Morning found him hunting mushrooms in 
the spruce woods. The sun was trying to 
burn through a mist that rose whitely from 
Lone Lake, and hung in blue-gray shadows 


A JOKE ON THE HIRED MAN 


21 


up and down the brook beds. The dew lay 
heavy on the ground, making the scent of his 
foot-prints doubly strong. In the uncanny 
stillness that the ceasing of the wind had 
brought, he began to wonder if it had all been 
a dream about the camp-fire on the lake 
shore. 

He decided to go and see. But he would 
leave no tell-tale tracks. He would pick his 
steps, as far as possible, among the thickly 
fallen leaves or the rocks and down-logs, 
avoiding the bare earth. When he came to 
Beaver Brook, he accidentally left a foot¬ 
print on the muddy bank, but cleverly 
trampled it out till no one could have told 
whether he was going or coming. Then for 
a time he waded. 

Arrived at the scene of the camp-fire, 
whose embers were now white ash, he found 
it had been deserted some time since. But 
though the scent was faint, the first hasty 
sniff assured him that it was the camp of the 
Hired Man. 

There were two more odors that interested 
him greatly. One was that of iron, like the 


22 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

Hired Man’s gun. (At that point his fur 
rose along the back of his neck, his lips bared 
in a snarl, and he rose on tip toe and sniffed 
this way and that to see if the man was 
near.) 

The other smell was the delicious frag¬ 
rance of smoked ham, (which he had never 
tasted, but felt sure he’d like to.) That was 
worth investigating. He wondered if the 
ham and the gun had gone in the same direc¬ 
tion. He decided it was worth taking a 
chance to find out.—Besides, he must locate 
the enemy, the better to avoid him. 

Meantime, he was hungry, and there was 
Pecan, the black cat of the woods,—cousin to 
Madame Mink,—fishing one trout pool after 
another and leaving half his catch uneaten. 
A fearful waste, thought Mother Black 
Bear’s young hopeful.—But he could remedy 
that. His little black eyes twinkled as he 
followed at a polite distance behind the 
wasteful one. 

After that he had time to watch Mother 
Black Bear, who was finding it all but impos¬ 
sible to make the wee new cubs behave this 


A JOKE ON THE HIRED MAN 


23 


morning. Every time she tossed a fish to 
shore, both Bluff and Boxer grabbed for it; 
then they generally bumped each other on the 
sensitive tips of their noses, and forgot the 
fish in scrapping it out. Their little teeth 
were needle-sharp, when they abandoned 
their furry boxing gloves and clinched. 

Then Mother Black Bear would scold, and 
they would hang their heads, or perhaps go 
galloping into the lake and race each other 
with loud splashes that scared the trout into 
the depths of the pools, so that there was 
nothing to do but to go in search of a new 
fishing ground. 

How Twinkly loved it all,—the woods life! 

Just then a snapping twig away up on the 
hill-side made him turn to listen. In that 
instant something whizzed past his shoulder, 
and a terrific crash smote his ears like thun¬ 
der. It was the Hired Man with the gun. 

‘ 6 Quick!” breathed Mother Black Bear, 
shoving her cubs into the nearest cover. 
“It’s a hunter, sure as fate!” 

‘‘That was what I call a close shave,” 
Twinkly told himself, as the odor of singed 


24 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

fur reached Ms nostrils. And he too sought 
cover. 

All that day the little bear was conscious 
that the Hired Man was on Ms trail. Now, • 
indeed, h.e was glad he had watched Frisky 
Fox. For it took fox-like manoeuvres to 
keep out of gun range. 

On and on he pussy-footed it, using every 
strategy he knew,—and the little black bear 
was a good scout, let me tell you. He could 
easily have gotten away among the high 
peaks, but his curiosity was too much for 
him. He must learn the whereabouts of the 
invader, or he would never know when he 
might stumble on him unexpectedly. 

Once when he felt the need of a moment’s 
rest, he hid beMnd a boulder and waited for 
the man to pass. But his shadow,—lying 
long across the path,—gave him away. The 
man was taken by surprise, however, and 
Twinkly, with an angry chopping of his 
jaws, charged him full tilt. The man raised 
his gun to fire, but Twinkly Eyes was already 
dodging off between the tree trunks at the 
speed of an express train, and when he 



“Aiming with eyes still heavy with sleep" 












A JOKE ON THE HIRED MAN 


25 


finally paused like a black stump to peer be¬ 
hind him, the man had lost sight of him en¬ 
tirely. 

After that the little bear was tired. Tak¬ 
ing to the top of a pine tree, he clamped his 
legs about a limb and slept. 

In that darkest hour between night-fall 
and moon-rise, he roused himself. Of 
course he was famished, after his hard day. 
Then an idea set his little black eyes to 
twinkling more than ever. Tip-toeing 
softly along the trail of the huntsman, he 
came at last to where he had made that 
night’s camp. He, too, was tired out with 
his chase. He slept soundly. 

His fire leapt brightly in the clearing, a 
fact that at first kept the little bear at a dis¬ 
tance. But—joy of joys!—from the side of 
the crude lean-to in whose shelter the Hired 
Man had made his bed, hung the ham whose 
odor was so tantalizing! 

Twinkly Eyes made a slow, stealthy ap¬ 
proach from the rear; then, summoning all 
his courage to cross the circle of the fire¬ 
light, he grabbed the prize! 


26 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

At that moment the man awoke. Reach¬ 
ing instinctively for his gun, he peered after 
his rapidly disappearing visitor, aiming with 
eyes still heavy with sleep. His shot, of 
course, went wild. 

Before he could pull the trigger a second 
time, the little black rascal had placed a good 
safe distance between them,—the ham s till 
gripped tightly between his greedy jaws! 


CHAPTER IYj 


SURPRISES 

F ROM Twinkly’s point of view, he had 
found the ham on his own home range, 
on which the Hired Man was intruding. 

However, he realized that the man crea¬ 
ture had brought it there, and the thought 
tickled him immensely. 

For days to come, though, his life was to be 
in danger.—So, also, was cross old Chet- 
woof’s. Nor was the Hired Man’s gun all 
they had to look out for. Once the little 
bear just avoided stepping on a trap. It 
was baited with ham! 

But though he had too large a bump of cau¬ 
tion to venture back, the odor was so tempt¬ 
ing that he could not bring himself to leave 
it. 

This trap, as it happened, was set on that 
No Man’s Land, the lake shore. Presently 

27 


2£ TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

Chetwoof came shambling along. He 
paused in a leisurely manner to sharpen his 
claws on a birch tree, preparatory to spear¬ 
ing a fish. “E-wow-wow,” he muttered 
sleepily. 

Soon he began to sniff. Ham he had never 
tasted, but all the same, he knew it was some¬ 
thing good. Twinkly watched quietly from 
behind two tree trunks that grew close to¬ 
gether,—a favorite vantage point. 

Now Chetwoof was experienced in the 
ways of man. Winters when the wolverine 
robbed the fur traps, the trappers used to 
blame it on old Chetwoof,—though he was 
very likely to be deep in his winter sleep at 
the time,—the best kind of alibi. But his 
foot-prints were much like those of the thiev¬ 
ing skunk-bear, (as the wolverine is called,) 
—which was circumstantial evidence,—and 
the real bear often got the blame for the 
ruined furs. He was therefore used to com¬ 
ing upon the bear-traps that were baited for 
himself. 

But he had learned wisdom,—at the ex¬ 
pense of a toe or two. Quick to turn misf or- 


SURPRISES 


29 


tune into good, lie had discovered how 
to spring the traps and eat the bait 
intended for him, without being made a 
prisoner. 

Today, as Twinkly watched him, he simply 
dug the trap out of the ground where it had 
been so cunningly concealed; and turning it 
bottom uppermost, he sprang it and helped 
himself to the ham rind. 

“That certainly was clever!” admired 
Twinkly Eyes, ever ready to do justice to an 
enemy. 

But he did not envy Chetwoof long. 
Later that same day he found the greedy, 
battle-scarred old fellow rolling about in 
agony. He had eaten a piece of poisoned 
bait that the man had thought it would be 
fun to leave there for someone of the bear 
tribe.—But Chetwoof was soon gobbling 
down every emetic mushroom he could find, 
red-peppery taste and all, lest he yield his 
life and his fur coat to the man with the 
queer idea of a good time.—He came out of 
that experience a sadder, but a wiser bear. 

After that, for awhile, Twinkly Eyes saw 


30 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

nothing of either Chetwoof or the man, and 
he was free to have a good time himself. 

He loved to watch the otters,—queer, 
puppy-like creatures, with their long tails 
that helped so much in swimming and coast¬ 
ing. The entire otter family would spend 
hours and hours of a moonlight night just 
sliding down a mud bank into the pool be¬ 
neath, clambering out again and mounting 
the incline for another slide. 

One night he waited till they had gone fish¬ 
ing, then he too tried the mud bank, and the 
moon smiled at the little rascal, as he seated 
himself square on his haunches like a fat pup 
and coasted. 

After all, there was no use in taking life 
too seriously, Mother Nature might have told 
him, (had she been in the habit of telling 
her secrets). The chief reason why the bear 
has survived so wonderfully in a changing 
world is just that ability of his to play. For 
in play he is continually strengthening his 
body and quickening his brain, developing 
resource, courage and kindliness. (And 
isn’t it a lucky thing for the other forest folk 


SURPRISES 


31 


that, with all his size and cunning, he is so 
good-natured ?) 

The never-ending search for food that his 
appetite demands only means berrying and 
fishing, and playing tag with mice and grass¬ 
hoppers, and hunting for tasty wild flowers. 
That way, he has learned to eat all kinds of 
food, and never a season comes but he knows 
where to find something good. 

But the little black bear was not the only 
one of the forest folk with a sense of humor. 
Mrs. Night-hawk had a bit of mischief in her 
make-up. For the longest time, Twinkly 
thought the beaver meadow simply infested 
with snakes. Everywhere he went these 
days, he seemed always to be just about to 
step on something that went “hiss-s-s-s-s!” 
till he all but jumped out of his skin. “I 
must be getting nervous,’’ he decided. 

Then one night as he was shuffling along, 
wishing he could find a bee-tree, just as he 
raised his foot to plant it on a little brown 
hummock in the meadow grass, it rose with 
a whirr of wings, its great cricket-catching 
mouth opened in a hiss. 


32 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

4 4 Mercy! ’ * gasped the little bear. 4 4 Has it 
been you all this time?” 

44 It is this time,” laughed Mrs. Night- 
hawk. 4 4 Were you really frightened ? You 
see, I had to get quick action, or you would 
have planted your foot in the middle of my 
back.” 

With this and other happenings to occupy 
his mind, Twinkly Eyes thought very little 
about the Hired Man, though that sixth sense 
still whispered 44 Danger!” whenever he 
came near a trap or exposed himself to gun- 
sight. 

One day he met a bull moose towering high 
above him, with his great pronged antlers, 
and the little hear decided he had better yield 
the right of way. 

But as events fell out, he was to meet an 
even graver peril before he had further cause 
for worry on the man’s account. 

He had been teetering back and forth on a 
boulder at the head of a rock-slide when, all 
of a sudden it set a whole stream of little 
rocks to sliding. One rock jarred against 
another till with a growing rumble, a mass of 


SURPRISES 


33 


gliding stone surrounded him on every side. 

At the first movement, his uncertain 
boulder had gone bounding down the gulch 
and off the precipice with rebounding thun¬ 
der. The frightened bear slid with the 
ground beneath him. It was a perilous posi¬ 
tion. The moment his feet should go out 
from under him, all those rocks would come 
pelting down upon him, and he would be 
crushed beneath their weight. 

His hair rose in horror as he saw himself 
being carried straight at a big boulder that 
stuck up through the sliding gravel bed. 
Then he summoned the courage of despair. 

With one monstrous leap he made for this 
safety zone! 


CHAPTER V 


THE TRAP 

T WINKLY EYES had certainly had a 
hair-raising experience on the rock- 

slide. 

Indeed, had it not been for the one huge 
boulder that stood up so firmly through the 
moving mass, as it ground its way down the 
mountain-side, the little black bear would 
have been crushed beneath the avalanche. 

As it was, he had kept his wits about him, 
and at the very moment when it seemed as if 
he were about to be hurled crushingly 
against the boulder, he had leapt to its top, 
and clung there while the smaller stones flew 
by beneath him. 

At last it was over, and the stone slope lay 
quiet. But it was a mighty scared little bear 
that still clung to his pinnacle of safety. 

His first impulse, when the slide had 

34 


THE TRAP 


35 


stopped, was to bolt like mad away from the 
danger zone. But bears are brainy people, 
and on second thought he realized that the 
peril was by no means wholly past; for if he 
ran, he might again start the rock-slide into 
action before he was half way across it. 

No, the wise thing was to take his bearings 
first, and study the lay of the land in all four 
directions. 

A careful scrutiny convinced him that the 
narrowest part of the slide lay to his right. 
Creeping ever so carefully over the treacher¬ 
ous footing, so as not to dislodge a single 
stone, he presently reached firm ground. 
With a grunt of relief he raced away from 
the unpleasant place as fast as his legs could 
carry him. 

It is hard for either a boy or a bear cub 
to keep out of mischief for long. 

“I wonder!” Twinkly asked himself one 
day, remembering the sticky maple sap into 
which he had so often dipped his paw, “I 
just wonder if there isn’t some more of that 
sweet taste around there,” and once more 
he made for the deserted sugar camp, this 


36 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


time trying it boldly from the man trail. 
Never before had he dared to make his way 
along the man trail. Perhaps he could still 
find some crumb or stain of the sugar around 
the deserted cabin. 

The little log shack now lay gleaming in 
all the whiteness of fresh peeled logs before 
him. Suddenly his left fore foot was seized 
in a grasp that wrung a snarl of pain from 
his lips. He wrenched angrily at the Thing. 
Then came fear,—fear of the steel Thing 
that held him fast,—-and with it the memory 
of how Mother Black Bear had likewise been 
caught in a trap, and had struggled and 
clawed and bit at the Thing all one dreadful 
night in the effort to tear free. How she had 
clawed and chewed, and boxed and wrestled 
with the great log to which the trap was at¬ 
tached, dragging it with her till it caught 
between two trees and could go no further.— 
But in some mysterious way the trap had 
opened for her at the last. 

No, the thing was still mysterious! And 
so he too wrenched and struggled, and 


THE TRAP 


37 


growled and whimpered, and did everything 
except give up hope of winning free. 

The crescent moon looked down on his 
agony of effort, and watching, passed around 
the sky. The stars came out: the stars went 
in again, all but the one big bright one in the 
East, that waited till the sun should begin 
stirring in his bed, driving the grayness from 
the sky. And still Twinkly struggled, his 
paw hurting worse and worse.—And still the 
iron Thing showed no sign of giving way. 

Then—climax of all his misery—human 
foot-steps sounded down the trail, and the 
Hired Man came striding into view, a huge 
bark berry pail in either hand. Now surely 
the end had come, thought Twinkly Eyes,— 
for the Hired Man had seized a club. But 
the little black bear prepared to sell his life 
at a price. 


CHAPTER .VI 

AN UNGRATEFUL GUEST 


“Q1T0P!” 

O It was the Boy from the Valley 
Farm, racing pell-mell down the trail, his 
bark berry pail cast to the winds. 

There followed exciting talking on the 
Man’s part. But the Boy—small as he- was 
—seemed by some mysterious power to have 
the final say in the matter. Twinkly, watch¬ 
ing, (crouched for the last desperate 
spring,) saw that the Hired Man dropped his 
club. The Boy it was who approached. 
Twinkly prepared to defend himself, though 
he could not, for the life of him, see that the 
Boy had either teeth or claws to put up much 
of a fight. 

Then the Hired Man returned with a 
great, heavy sugar cask, and holding it be¬ 
fore him, the open end toward the prisoner, 
approached. 


38 


AN UNGRATEFUL GUEST 


39 


Twinkly, with a roar of wrath, strove to 
dart to one side of the barrel. But the bar¬ 
rel also darted to one side, and in some mys¬ 
terious manner he found himself inside it. 
Then the cover was slipped under the open 
end, the cask was turned, the other end up 
(and Twinkly with it) and the lid was 
clamped on fast. My, what a struggle the 
furry little fellow did put up! But it was 
no use at all. Only—in the general excite¬ 
ment—his paw had been released from the 
trap. 

Then the sound of retreating foot-steps 
told him that the Hired Man had gone back 
the way he had come. The Boy stayed to 
speak more of the soothing words, and to 
bore some air holes into the cask. He even 
poked some tiny lumps of maple sugar from 
his lunch, pail through the air holes. The 
little bear was no wise mollified, but he saw 
no reason why he should not eat the sugar 
just the same. 

Later the Hired Man returned with a 
horse and jumper (one of the stout back- 
woods sleds that can be dragged over the 


40 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

roughest trail), and the barrel and the-bear 
made the journey to the Valley Farm. It 
was a puzzling and rather terrifying experi¬ 
ence for a yearling cub, and he was all ready 
once more to fight for his life when the lid 
was removed from his sugary prison cell. 

Here another surprise met him. He 
rushed forth, only to be smothered in an 
armful of blankets; and though he managed 
to accomplish wonders with his claws, (as 
the Hired Man’s yell of pain attested), he 
emerged with a doggy-smelling collar about 
his neck and a clanking chain connecting the 
collar with a wire clothes line that stretched 
the length of the barn-yard. 

A kindly looking Farmer came to inspect. 
“Oh, Father,” exclaimed the Boy, “he 
stepped into Jake’s trap, and I want to keep 
him.” 

The Farmer looked extremely dubious. 

“Just till his foot heals?” 

“Well, you can try it. But you can’t 
tame a bear that old. ’ ’ 

Thus Twinkly Eyes became a beloved but 
ungrateful guest. 


AN UNGRATEFUL GUEST 


41 


There were half frightened faces that 
peered at him from the safety of the kitchen 
door (though Twinkly Eyes was the more 
afraid,) and soft, high pitched voices, one 
that of the Boy’s mother, the other that of a 
little man-cub in blue calico skirts and bare 
brown legs. 

A great Y-shaped flock of wild geese was 
honk-a-tonk-a-tonking northward at this mo¬ 
ment, and they stared amazed at the strange 
spectacle of a Boy offering the angry, fright¬ 
ened little bear all manner of good things to 
eat,—albeit at a safe distance from the white 
teeth from which his lips wrinkled back in a 
growl of warning. 

Time passed, and as day after day went by 
and he received only kindness and soft 
speech, the little bear began to understand 
that he was not to be devoured after all, but 
instead, was to have more good things to eat 
than he could stow away,—which is saying a 
very great deal. He also felt better natured 
as his paw began to heal. 

The Hired Man he never would have any 
use for, but the Boy was not a bad sort, and 


42 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

would really—he thought—have made a 
pretty decent bear himself, what with his 
ability to go about on his hind legs, and box 
and wrestle, and catch fish, and eat incredible 
quantities of sweets and berries. 

Had Twinkly Eyes been that year’s cub, 
he could have been tamed easily enough. 
But after a year in the wild, it was impos¬ 
sible to make him contented on the end of a 
chain. On the other hand, had he been used 
to human kind, the usual sort that tease and 
torture, or try to murder every bear they see, 
he never would have gotten up the courage 
even to wrestle with his little captor,—as he 
soon learned to do. But remember, he was a 
backwoods bear, and this was a backwoods 
farm, and he had never seen human kind be¬ 
fore the coming of the sugar camp to bis 
domain. Besides, here never a hand was 
raised against him, while he was treated 
daily to such delicacies as he had scarcely 
dreamed of, in his woods life. 


CHAPTER VII 


A GREAT FIND 

G RADUALLY the little bear stifled his 
natural longing to return to freedom, 
(at least, till he should see a chance of 
escape,) by investigating the strange things 
he saw everywhere about him. 

To begin with, there were the horses,— 
who had stampeded at the first whiff of him, 
and who shied even now in passing. There 
were the cows, who had milled about him 
with lowered horns, the day Twinkly Eyes 
had explored the milking yard. There was 
Lop Ear, the spotted hound, who had at first 
been torn between wrath and fear, but who 
had finally been taught to keep his distance 
and maintain his peace. There were the 
chickens, who scattered wildly at his ap¬ 
proach and from whom he was barred abso¬ 
lutely by a high wire fence. There was also 

43 


44 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

Thomas the black cat, between whom and 
himself no love was lost. 

But there were also countless field mice, 
whose retreats he smelled out with that won¬ 
drous nose of his, and whom he spent gleeful 
hours in digging out, to the farmer’s great 
surprise,—and also that of Thomas. He 
could beat the black cat twelve times over at 
catching mice. Thomas watched, green eyed 
with envy, as Twinkly snapped up mouse 
after mouse. (For bears are Mother Na¬ 
ture’s prize mouse traps, it seems.) 

Then one day the Boy took a basketful of 
quartered seed potatoes and planted them in 
careful rows up and down the field. 

All that day the most delicious odor came 
to Twinkly’s nostrils, that could smell out a 
root away under ground as no human nose 
could. It fairly made his mouth water. 

That night, as luck would have it, the 
farmer loosed the chain from the clothes¬ 
line, (to-morrow being wash-day,) and fas¬ 
tened it to the fence that enclosed the potato 
field. 

Oh, joy of joys for Twinkly Eyes! No 


A GREAT FIND 


45 


sooner had the farmer gone than the little 
bear sniffed, and he snuffed, and he pawed, 
and he clawed, till he had dug out a couple of 
the delicious smelling roots. 

My, how good these strange roots tasted to 
him! How sweet compared to the skunk 
cabbages and the biting jack-in-the-pulpit 
bulbs with which he had sought to satisfy his 
craving for fresh vegetables in the woods! 
More luscious even than the tender roots of 
the little hog peanuts of his wild wood; or 
even the Golden Club or Jerusalem Arti¬ 
chokes. 

‘ ‘ A feast! Hurray! ’ ’ sang the little black 
bear with a happy whine. 

A feast he certainly had that night. For 
by yanking his chain along the fence, peg by 
peg, he had soon demolished several rows of 
the Boy’s planting. He was certainly in 
luck, for once, he told himself. And his 
little black eyes twinkled with delight, as he 
licked his chops and sniffed about to see if 
there were more that he could reach.—Then 
he curled up and had a snooze, his furry 
black sides comfortably rounded. 


46 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

The next day at dawn the Boy, trudging 
barn-ward to feed the stock, gave one gasp 
of dismay, as he saw the torn earth where 
the seed potatoes had been planted. Then 
he doubled up with laughter. 

Twinklv awoke, as peal after peal of mirth 
assailed his unaccustomed ears, and with one 
half closed eye he surveyed the scene. He 
tried to tell himself that he had only done 
what little black bears are supposed to do. 
In the woods he dug roots all day long. But 
all the same, he knew he was on the Boy’s 
range now, and he more than half suspected 
that he had taken advantage of the Boy’s 
good nature. » 

Then as it slowly dawned on him that he 
was the cause of all that laughter, a shamed 
look stole into his roguish countenance, and 
he crept under the partial hiding of a black¬ 
berry bush, wishing he could crawl into a 
hole and then pull the hole in after him, the 
way Fatty Chuck appears to do when in 
trouble. 

But the Boy was soon too busy to notice 
him, for what would happen to his pet if he 


A GREAT FIND 


47 


didn’t get some more potatoes planted before 
his father came ? 

“You little black rascal!” exclaimed the 
Boy, as he surveyed the rows where Twinkly 
had rooted up the seed potatoes. And 
Mother Black Bear’s young hopeful pre¬ 
tended harder and harder that he was fast 
asleep at the end of his chain. 

But underneath all his dismay at what his 
bear had done, the Boy knew he must protect 
him from the farmer’s justifiable displeas¬ 
ure, or he might no longer be permitted to 
keep his furry playfellow. 


CHAPTER VIII 


TWINKLY EYES REPENTS 

T HE Boy set to work as fast as lie was 
able to replant the rows the little bear 
had destroyed before his father should find 
what had happened. For it would be much 
easier to confess, if the Boy could point to 
the field all planted again as good as new. 

After that he turned his attention to the 
weeding of the corn-field, taking Twinkly 
Eyes along for company, and tethering him 
just out of reach. The corn was only a few 
inches high, and the Boy had to take great 
care not to mistake it for grass and pull 
it up. 

The little bear sniffed longingly, for he 
dearly loved green, growing things. Then 
his sharp ears caught a tiny squeak, and he 
realized that a nest of field mice was some¬ 
where just under-ground. Field mice were 

48 


TWINKLY EYES REPENTS 


49 


his specialty, so he set to work, and half paw¬ 
ing, half rooting into the soft soil, he soon 
had about eight of the little pests where they, 
and the eighty children and eight hundred 
grandchildren they would have had that 
summer, could never destroy the farmer’s 
crops. 

By and by the Boy went into dinner.— 
Twinkly Eyes also felt that it was dinner 
time, but he knew he must not climb the fence 
and root up the tender corn shoots. No in¬ 
deed ! He was going to be a good bear after 
this!—But really, he could get along per¬ 
fectly well without the corn. For a little 
further down along the fence, his keen nose 
told him, was something even better. All his 
little year of life he had hunted out wild 
onions as a particular treat. 

Hitching his chain along the fence as he 
had before,—sure enough, there were the 
onions his clever nose had told him he would 
find! Proud of his woodcraft, he set his 
clever paws to work, and soon he had up¬ 
rooted all the onions he could eat. This 
time, surely, he told himself, he was playing 


50 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

safe. For had not Mother Black Bear her¬ 
self taught him to hunt onions ? 

But there were many things about this 
strange life at the Valley Farm that the little 
bear could not understand. One of these he 
learned when the Boy came back. The Boy 
was really provoked. For these were not 
the wild onions of the woodland. Twinkly 
Eyes had uprooted the farmer’s choicest 
onion sets, planted so carefully the week 
before. 

The Boy knew better than to try to punish 
the little bear by a blow. He realized that 
would only undo the effect of the kindness by 
which he had tried to tame him. But how 
to bring the little mischief maker to realize 
that he must not dig things up this way ? In 
the woods where Twinkly Eyes belonged, it 
was the right thing for him to dig up all the 
wild vegetables he could find. The Boy had 
never heard that mischief is only energy mis¬ 
placed. But something of this thought was 
running through his head as he studied the 
merry face of the little bear. 

Then a bright idea came to him.—A half 


TWINKLY EYES REPENTS 


51 


hour later Twinkly found himself shut into 
a stout packing box behind the barn. It was 
a erate in which some farm machinery had 
come, and it was as strong as iron. No hope 
of breaking through that, he found. It 
would be a matter of patiently chewing a 
way out. And what was the use, when he 
would still be on the end of the chain and the 
Boy could put him back again ? He quickly 
decided to waste no time in so hopeless an 
undertaking. Instead, he whined plead¬ 
ingly in the effort to tell the Boy he had 
meant no harm. But the farmer’s son 
thought he had better learn his lesson 
once for all, and so left him chained ai 
prisoner. 

Twinkly’s heart was near to bursting,— 
first with wrath at what was, to his mind, the 
injustice of his punishment, then with hurt 
that the Boy, whom he had thought his 
friend, should have turned upon him. Then 
the Boy came back with some table scraps of 
which the little bear was particularly fond, 
and he decided he might as well enjoy what 
he could of the situation. 


52 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

But about this time, Thomas, the black cat, 
came by, and sniffing greedily at the prison¬ 
er’s dinner, sneaked up just beyond 
Twinkly’s reach, and watched for the chance 
to steal a morsel. 

Twinkly gave a growl of warning. Worse 
than the thieving was the gleam of malicious 
pleasure in the yellow eyes of Thomas at 
sight of the humiliation of his rival mouser. 
How Twinkly hated that sneaking cat!— 
(Perhaps because Thomas reminded him of 
Bobby Lynx, the wild cat, who was always 
trying to steal his fish.) This animal was 
ever so much smaller, but like Bobby, the lit¬ 
tle bear decided, a coward and a sneak-thief. 

But wait! He’d show him yet! ( Thomas 

sat just out of reach, devouring the choicest 
morsel from Twinkly’s feeding pan.) 

When at last, toward evening, the Boy 
came again, and saw how like a great, fat, 
pleading-eyed puppy the dejected little bear 
looked up at him, he decided his prisoner had 
repented quite enough, and released him to 
the comparative freedom of the long chain. 


TWINKLY EYES REPENTS 


53 


This, Twinkly began straightway yanking 
up and down the length of the clothes-line to 
see how far he could go,—for in the back of 
that long head of his was a plan. 


CHAPTER IX 


THOMAS ALSO REPENTS 

T WINKLY waited till, with the coming 
of darkness, the black cat came to 
watch for the mice that scurried from their 
hiding places to pick up the scattered grain. 
He would have to comer Thomas, he well 
knew, else the old cat could simply race be¬ 
yond his reach, and Twinkly would be help¬ 
less to lay a paw on him. 

Suddenly Thomas pounced for a mouse, 
and the mouse ran squeaking into the wood- 
pile, which stood staked up against the back 
of the bam. Here was Twinkly’s chance! 

Quick as a wink, the little bear pounced 
after the cat, the cat dove into a hole in the 
wood-pile where a log was missing, and 
Twinkly stood guarding the hole. 

“Now I’ve got you, you old sneak, you!” 
growled the little bear in the depths of his 
chest. 


54 


THOMAS ALSO REPENTS 


55 


“ You haven’t got me yet, and what’s more, 
you’re not going to get me!” Thomas hissed, 
snapping at Twinkly’s furry paw with claws 
out. 

“You’ll see whether I’ve got you or not,” 
grumbled Twinkly Eyes. 

“You certainly can’t reach me here,” 
yowled Thomas. 

“Can’t, eh 9—Well, you just wait and see. 
I’m not so easily discouraged as all that!” 
and the little bear set to work to carry out his 
threat. 

Now Thomas was at the other end of the 
hole the missing log had left. It was much 
farther than Twinkly’s farthest reach. But 
bears have paws almost as clever as human 
hands. They use them for knife and fork 
and spoon, shovel and pick axe, and climbing 
irons, and comb, and boxing gloves, and fish¬ 
ing tackle, and half a dozen other things as 
well. And Twinkly had watched the Boy 
and seen the way he carried in wood for his 
mother. 

The next thing Thomas knew, the wood- 
pile was being hurled apart, log by log, and 


56 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

the little bear still stood guard at the end of 
the tunnel in which Thomas had made him¬ 
self a prisoner. 

Then at last Twinkly Eyes had cleared a 
space so large that he could crawl in after 
Thomas. Grabbing the yowling cat, (whose 
teeth and claws he minded not at all through 
his thick fur,) the little bear hauled him 
forth. 

The cat naturally expected to be killed and 
eaten. But Twinkly was by preference a 
vegetarian, (except for small, tender mice 
and grasshoppers and an occasional speckled 
trout). He had no stomach for his enemy. 
But he did mean to punish him. 

Thrusting the protesting animal into the 
box in which he himself had spent the after¬ 
noon repenting at his leisure, he seated him¬ 
self comfortably in front of the little door¬ 
way, and prepared to spend the night on 
guard,—while the mice scurried back and 
forth in the moonlight, and Thomas glowered 
helplessly at his captor. And there the Boy 
found them at dawn. 


CHAPTER X 
“safety first!” 

N OW Twinkly Eyes had always been 
fond of watching Frisky Fox. The 
little red-brown mouser, with his pointed 
nose and bushy tail, was so clever in every¬ 
thing he did! 

If the little bear’s furry sides were com¬ 
fortably full, and he wasn’t too busy hunting 
grasshoppers, he used to watch every time he 
heard Frisky’s sharp little high-pitched bark 
on the hill ridge back of the barn, to see what 
he could see. Sometimes—before he came 
to the farm—he even used to follow, padding 
softly just far enough behind to let Frisky 
know that he didn’t mean to interfere with 
his hunting. At these times he tried every¬ 
thing that the fox pup tried,—if a fat little 
clown in fur can imitate one so light and 
dainty as a red fox pup. 

When Frisky would leap suddenly to one 

57 


58 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

side of the trail, landing perhaps on the top 
of a rock—where his feet would leave no 
scent,—Twinkly Eyes would try his best to 
make the same leap to another rock,—and 
you would be surprised to see how light he 
was when he tried to be! He could move as 
soundlessly as any one in the woods, when he 
set out to follow a trail. Only he never could 
leap so far as Frisky. 

The violets were scenting the dewy air one 
starry night when Twinkly Eyes, still as a 
mouse, at the end of his chain, decided to see 
what Frisky Fox was up to. 

First the fox pup yipped at a prickly 
porcupine who sat in a hump on a limb. 
But that was only a bluff. He had had one 
experience trying to bite a porcupine, and 
once was more than enough. Next he dug 
out a nest of mice. Twinkly’s mouth would 
have watered, only he was already so stuffed 
with grubs and grasshoppers and field mice 
that he hadn’t room left for anything. 

Next the fox pup chased red-brown 
Madame Mink, whom he found in the tunnel 
leading out of a mouse nest. (He had no 


“SAFETY FIRST!” 


59 


more chance of catching her than anything in 
the world, as Madame Mink promptly made 
for the nearest tree, where Frisky could not 
follow.) 

Then it was a woodchuck he tried to rout, 
just for the fun of digging. But the faster 
he worked, the faster the chuck dug himself 
a new tunnel, till he got under a boulder. 

After that Frisky tried another burrow, 
whose main entry-way,—had he looked close 
enough,—was speckled with soft little black 
and white hairs half hidden in the mud. 
But Frisky did not look close enough, for he 
was young and rash, and had forgotten all 
about a certain warning Mother Red Fox 
had once given him. 

Twinkly sat behind a big rock where he 
could see all that went on. 

Well it was for Twinkly Eyes that his 
chain kept him far away! In fact, he soon 
wished it was even farther,—though he 
wouldn’t have missed what followed for any¬ 
thing on earth. 

Now Frisky Fox had learned a very great 
deal his first summer,—which was the year 


60 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

before. But he had been so tiny that even 
Mother Red Fox could not teach him every¬ 
thing. Then had come white weather, and 
ever so many woods folk had nestled them¬ 
selves into their dens and gone to sleep for 
the winter. The person whose front door he 
was now examining was one of those who 
hibernate, which may have been one reason 
why the red fox pup had never happened to 
meet him. 

But, as it happened, a very queer fellow 
lived in that under-ground home. Twinkly 
Eyes had often seen him from a distance, but 
Mother Black Bear had always taught him 
never to go near, though he couldn’t imagine 
why.—(He had meant some time to find 
out!) 

Yes, he had often seen the two white 
stripes and the bushy white-tipped tail that 
told the wood folk it was Mephitis the 
skunk. 

Before that evening was over, Twinkly 
Eyes was genuinely ashamed of one member 
of his family tree. For Mephitis too was 
his cousin, as are all the wood folk who walk 


‘SAFETY FIRST!” 


61 


on a flat hind foot like a child. But then, 
Old Mother Nature has given each beast and 
bird and fish some way of keeping itself from 
being hurt by others, and so it must be quite 
all right. She has given speed to the deer, 
that he may run away from his enemies; and 
fighting strength to the wild-cat, and prickles 
to the porcupine, and protective color to the 
little brown ducks,—who can scarcely be 
seen on their nests,—and both speed and 
cleverness to the fox, that he may catch his 
food as well as run from danger. And to the 
bear, highest in rank among the wood folk, 
and perhaps most valuable in Nature’s plan, 
she has given both strength and speed, with 
plenty of brains for good measure. 

To Mephitis wise Mother Nature has 
given another means of defense,—though 
Frisky Fox had yet to find that out! 

Now Mephitis might almost be taken for 
a black pussy-cat, except for the white 
stripes down his sides. But when you come 
to look closely at him you will see that his 
hips stand up in an arch, making him walk 
ridiculously like a caterpillar. 


62 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

It had been a peaceful evening for Mephi¬ 
tis. He had ridded the woods of seven field 
mice and eighteen beetles, to say nothing of 
enough grasshoppers, toads and grass snakes 
to make a nice variety. No one had dared 
molest him. Now he slept. 

In a burrow only a little more concealed, 
with two back doors instead of only one, lay 
Mrs. Mephitis with ten of as cunning kit¬ 
tens as ever you saw. And each of the ten 
new baby skunks had a tiny white stripe 
down the middle of its nose, and two broad 
stripes on its back, just like father’s. Thus 
far, they were as clean and sweet as any 
barn-yard Tabby’s little family, too. They 
were delightful, when they didn’t get angry. 

Suddenly Mephitis heard someone paw¬ 
ing and digging at the entrance to his home. 
That would never, never do. Who could it 
be that dared ?—Emerging suddenly, he 
showed his pointed face, with the little white 
stripe running down the middle of his nose. 
Even that had no effect. To his amazement, 
the fox pup only backed away for a moment, 
then came back at him ? threatening instant 


“SAFETY FIRST!” 


63 


death. Mephitis stamped and waved the 
tip of his tail in warning. 

Then he stepped leisurely out of his 
doorway and turned his back on the impu¬ 
dent thing.—The next moment Frisky was 
enveloped in a spray so acrid and evil-smell¬ 
ing that his eyes were smarting tears and he 
could hardly gasp for breath. 

It took him just about a quarter of a min¬ 
ute to leave that neighborhood!—Such roll¬ 
ing in the sand, such plunging and sousing as 
he gave himself in the lake, and such a ter¬ 
rible time as Frisky had for the rest of that 
night, Twinkly Eyes decided he never in all 
his life had seen before! 

In fact, poor Frisky’s fur didn’t smell 
clean for weeks afterwards, and it warned all 
the mice of his coming. 

“That’s once I played 1 safety first’!” 
chuckled the little black bear. “ There are 
compensations about being on the end of a 
chain.” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE MYSTERY OF THE BERRY PIES 

I T was a warm, sunny day. Twinkly Eyes 
lay sprawled languidly along the limb of 
an old apple tree, his collar and chain bother¬ 
ing him not at all. 

In the woods he would have had his resting 
places every here and there along the trails 
he followed in his search for food. Here it 
had only been with the greatest difficulty that 
he had managed to climb, with the chain en¬ 
tangling his legs at every move. But it 
seemed a good, safe place, where no one could 
surprise him from the rear. He had an out¬ 
look over the entire barn-yard and the house 
beyond, while back of him lay the woods, 
stretching green up the side of Mount Olaf. 

He stretched luxuriously.—Suddenly he 
smelled the most delicious odor! It was 
wonderful. It was no odor he had ever 

64 


THE MYSTERY OF THE BERRY PIES 


65 


smelled before. It was like blueberries, and 
it was like the sugar he was always begging. 
But it was more than that. And it seemed to 
come straight from the kitchen window sill. 

Forgetting for the moment that he was on 
a chain, he started to drop to the ground, that 
he might go and investigate.—The next in¬ 
stant there was a jerk, and he was dangling 
helplessly in mid-air at the end of his chain. 

He gave a choked squeal of surprise, then 
began striking out with all four paws in his 
effort to get a clutch on the bark. But he 
hung just too far from either trunk or limb 
to reach them. Meantime, his eyes were 
fairly starting from their sockets in his ef¬ 
fort to breathe. He had all but hanged him¬ 
self! For his chain had got caught on the 
limb and he swung on the short end of it. 

Then the little bear’s sharp ears caught a 
sound in the barn, and he made one more ef¬ 
fort to voice his misery. It was a faint, 
hopeless little call,—but the Boy heard it. 
Racing to the spot where his pet hung help¬ 
less, he put his thinking apparatus on high 
speed. If he waited to climb the tree, his 


66 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


pet might choke before he could release him. 
Already the little bear’s tongue was hanging 
from his mouth. There was not an instant 
to lose. 

No, there was a better way! Grabbing a 
plank that lay on a pile behind the barn, he 
slanted it ladder-wise against the limb from 
which Twinkly hung suspended. The little 
bear did just what the Boy knew he would. 
Grabbing the plank with all fours, he eased 
the strain on his collar that was choking him, 
and once more he could breathe. 

The Boy climbed the tree, and began un¬ 
tangling the chain. Twinkly, meantime, 
growled deeply in his hurt and indignation. 

Then the thing was done. 

“Come on down, old fellow,” urged the 
Boy. But Twinkly, who did not under¬ 
stand, only growled the more ferociously, 
clinging with all his might to the plank. 

“You’re all right now,” urged the Boy. 
“Let go and come down.” And he seized 
one end of the plank and lowered it to the 
ground. 

The victim of the accident, thinking the 


THE MYSTERY OF THE BERRY PIES 67 


Boy had turned upon him and meant to add 
still further hurt, dropped to the ground 
with a roar and ran at his supposed tor¬ 
mentor. And he did not realize that the Boy 
was still his friend till he came back with a 
peace offering.—But such an offering! 
From the juicy purple wedge that dripped 
from his hand came that same wonderful 
scent of mingled berries and sugar that had 
started all the trouble. It was blueberry 
pie, still warm from the oven! The little 
bear took it in one mouthful, (nearly swal¬ 
lowing the Boy’s hand as well,) then begged 
for more. He was certain he had never, in 
all his life, tasted anything so good. 

After that, it was easy to teach him tricks. 
The Boy had but to offer him a piece of pie 
as a reward. Soon he would stand up and 
beg, and wrestle, and run races with his 
young keeper. 

But a queer thing happened about this 
time. The Boy’s mother had promised to 
make him blueberry pie every time the Boy 
brought her the big birchbark pail full of 
berries. Twinkly Eyes and the farmer’s son 


68 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

used, therefore, to make long expeditions 
into the woods, the little bear on one end of 
his chain, the other end of which, for safety’s 
sake, the Boy fastened around his waist. 
Had Twinkly Eyes but known it, the Boy 
was as much chained as the bear. But some¬ 
how, after his first lesson in the supremacy 
of human kind, it never occurred to the little 
fellow. Besides, he loved to go berrying, 
and when it came time to come home, the 
Boy always had a few lumps of maple sugar 
to .coax him from the berry patch—for sugar 
he loved even more than berries. 

But though the Boy picked berries, and his 
mother always made the promised pie, and 
set it on the window sill to cool, it came to 
have a mysterious way of disappearing. 
The first time it happened, the Boy himself 
was questioned. But he declared he had not 
touched the pie, and he had a reputation for 
veracity. It was most peculiar! 

Pie after pie disappeared in this way, 
Every one on the place was questioned.— 
That is, every one human.—No one could ac¬ 
count for it. This was the backwoods, too, 



Twinkly Eyes raced about in the wildest excitement 





































































' 




THE MYSTERY OE THE BERRY PIES 69 


far from the possibility of tramps. The 
Hired Man rather believed in ghosts, but who 
ever heard of a ghost that ate blueberry pie ? 

Then one day the Boy stood guard. Hot 
from the oven came the pie. It steamed de¬ 
liciously as it lay cooling on the window sill. 

He turned to get a drink of water. Sud¬ 
denly there was a roar. Chains clanked, 
and the tin pie plate landed with a crash on 
the stony ground outside. Dashing to the 
window to see what had happened, imagine 
his amazement to see Twinkly Eyes racing 
about in the wildest excitement, a fragment 
of hot pie on his nose! 


CHAPTER XII 


WORSE THAN A PORCUPINE 

A FTER his experience with the hot pie, 
Twinkly Eyes became a mighty cau¬ 
tious hear. For he had brains, and one les¬ 
son was enough. 

For awhile he would not even touch the 
cold pie the Boy still offered him. The 
kitchen window-sill was now as safe as a 
lock-box. 

But the little hear was not the only one of 
the Lone Lake Folk who practised the law 
of the wild and ate whatever they fancied 
around the Valley Farm. For Unk Wunk 
the porcupine knew neither mine nor thine, 
when he found something good to eat. And 
every night for weeks now he had come to 
chew on the porch steps, whdse flavor he 
found to his taste. 

The farmer thought it must be for the 
slight salty flavor, as the prickly one always 

70 


WORSE THAN A PORCUPINE 71 

chewed on the place where they pounded up 
the rock salt for the cattle. Now even wild 
folk must have salt, and had Unk Wunk not 
been so lazy, he could have found it in the 
woods. For there is the Sweet Colts-foot, 
with its perfumed white flowers, in plenty, 
in the swamp lands. But Unk Wunk does 
not like swamp lands, and besides, the porch 
steps were handier. Wherefore it became 
his nightly habit to pay a visit to the Farm, 
and the farmer complained that he was ruin¬ 
ing the porch. 

“Why not leave my bear on guard 
asked the Boy. 

“A good idea, ” decided his father. 

That night Twinkly was chained to the 
porch. 

Now Unk Wunk the porcupine had no use 
at all for the little black bear. For though 
the prickly one could go his way in peace 
with most of the forest folk, secure in his 
armor of barbed quills, the mischievous cub 
had a way of slipping his long claws under 
him and with one good biff rolling him down 
hill. 


72 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


It was therefore with a grunt of disgust 
that he discovered Twinkly Byes there be¬ 
fore him in the moonlight. 

“Gr-r-r-r-r!” said the little hear, as Unk 
Wunk ambled fatly into view. “Keep away 
from here!” 

“Keep away yourself!” squeaked the por¬ 
cupine, “I’m not the one that ought to be 
afraid.” 

Twinkly approached with paw out¬ 
stretched. Unk Wunk humped his back and 
drew in his nose, and set all his prickers 
erect. He looked like a fat black needle- 
cushion with white tips to the needles. No 
one could touch him that way without get¬ 
ting hurt. 

“Just wait,” said Twinkly Eyes, sharpen¬ 
ing his claws on the steps. 

“I’m waiting,” grunted the needle cush¬ 
ion. 

Circling warily about the intruder, 
Twinkly Eyes decided that he too must wait. 
No use trying anything till the prickly one 
uncurled again. But once let him approach 


WORSE THAN A PORCUPINE 73 

the porch and biff! He’d get it on the tip 
of his sensitive nose. 

Hours passed. Unk Wunk uncurled 
every now and again, to see if the way to the 
steps was open. But Twinkly Eyes still 
stood on guard. Each time the porcupine 
uncurled, the little bear sharpened his claws 
afresh. At last the dawn light sent the stub¬ 
born one waddling stupidly back to the 
woods. 

“Now, Father,” said the Boy next morn¬ 
ing, “let’s see if that porcupine did any 
damage last night!” 

Then he stared.—For the steps were 
clawed to splinters. 

The little bear had been worse than the 
porcupine! 


CHAPTER XIII 


LUCK FOR FATTY CHUCK 

O NE night the little hear had been listen¬ 
ing to the Boy’s harmonica. 

The Boy had a way of sitting on the fence 
in the starlight and playing one tune after 
another, and Twinkly Eyes really enjoyed 
the music. 

Fatty Chuck, the one-armed wood-chuck 
that lived under the barn-yard fence, also 
enjoyed it, and came to sit in the shadow of 
a fence-post. And young Timothy, Ma mm y 
Cottontail’s youngest brown bunny, came 
hippity-hop from his home in the old stone 
wall to listen with long ears cocked forward. 
(But he never came too near the business 
end of Twinkly’s chain.) 

So intent was every one on enjoying the 
music that no one heard the soft pad-pad of 
approaching feet, as another visitor came 
tip-toeing through the moonlight. Had a 

74 


LUCK FOR FATTY CHUCK 75 

breeze been blowing tbeir way, the three 
furry folk at least would have known by 
their noses that it was the overgrown young 
wild cat, Bobby Lynx. 

But the breeze was not blowing their way 
just then,—it was blowing Bobby’s way,— 
and what it told Bobby, as he sniffed this way 
and that, was that both Fatty Chuck and 
Timothy were abroad that night. Bobby 
was no music lover, and he wouldn’t have 
come within eye-shot of the Boy for any¬ 
thing in the world. But he could play a 
waiting game till the Boy went in. 

Now Fatty Chuck would, to his mind, have 
made the best eating, because there was more 
to him. But Fatty was too near the barn 
to be quite safe. Timothy wouldn’t amount 
to much, but he was young and tender, and 
would taste fine, what there was of him. 
Besides, it would be much safer to stalk the 
brown bunny. 

Slipping closer inch by inch, his yellow 
eyes gleaming in the shadows and his tas- 
seled ears twitching with excitement, Bobby 
Lynx prepared to spring. 


76 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

But as it happened, Mammy Cottontail 
was also abroad that night. Prom where 
she stood, the breeze carried the danger sig¬ 
nal to her wriggling nose. ‘ 4 Stamp— 
stamp!” warned her long hind feet. Tim¬ 
othy heard, and darted away home—just in 
time! 

“Never mind,” thought Bobby Lynx, 
“I’d rather get Fatty Chuck anyway.” He 
waited till at last the Boy went to bed. 
Then he crept to where Patty sat nodding 
and trying to wake up enough to go home to 
sleep. One great pounce and he had the 
wood-chuck between his paws as a cat holds 
a mouse! 

Patty gave a squeak of despair. For 
surely, he thought, it was all up with him 
now. He did make an effort to edge away, 
and Bobby let him go just far enough to 
think he had escaped, then pounced on him 
again. Poor Patty crouched flat on the 
ground under the barbed paws, trembling 
and expecting every instant to be his last. 

But there was one thing Fatty had not 
reckoned on. (Neither had Bobby Lynx, 


LUCK FOR FATTY CHUCK 77 

for a matter of that.) And that was the lit¬ 
tle black bear. 

Now Twinkly had little use for Bobby. 
Again and again the little bear had caught 
himself trout, and Bobby had come sneaking 
by and tried to steal it from him. Some¬ 
times he got away with it, too. Twinkly had 
no use for cats, wild or tame. He was like 
a pup that way. 

He had known for some time that Bobby 
was approaching, and he longed to have it 
out with him for that last stolen fish. But 
he was a brainy little bear, and he realized 
that Bobby was still too far away for his 
chain to reach. 

At the very moment that Bobby leapt for 
Fatty Chuck, Twinkly Eyes was tip-toeing, 
as silent as a shadow, to pounce on the lynx 
kitten. As Bobby pounced the second time 
on poor Fatty, Twinkly landed him a box 
on the ears. 

For the next two minutes and a half, the 
moon looked down on a whirling ball of fur, 
half tawny and half black, and Lop Ear 
leapt from his dreams at the sound of the 


78 TWINKLY EYES AT YALLEY FARM 

awfullest yowls and howls and growls he had 
ever heard in his life. Then the ball separ¬ 
ated, and the yellow part of it made for the 
woods in wild leaps, while the black part 
followed as far as his chain would allow. 

At the moment of the fight, no one had 
given a thought to Patty Chuck. Fatty 
needed no invitation to go scuttling for his 
home under the barn-yard fence. For once 
he had had a stroke of luck! 


CHAPTER XIV 

TWINKLY EYES AND TEOTJBLE 

T HE swift, hot summer of the North 
Woods, with its mosquitoes and its 
thunder storms, had brought a feast of fruit 
and flowers and insects to the forest folk. 

Twinkly Eyes longed for a cooling swim 
in the Lake. But still he lived on at the end 
of a chain in the dusty barn-yard. 

Ah, well, he told himself, there was still 
the pleasure of eating! A number of fas¬ 
cinating odors seemed to come from the 
store-room at the back of the barn. But 
the Hired Man slept in a room just above 
it. 

At first the little bear’s chain was fast¬ 
ened too far away for him to reach the 
store-room window. But one night, as luck 
would have it, the heavy wire clothes-line, 
up and down which his chain traveled, was 

79 


BO TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

moved a little, and lie could make the longed 
for exploration. 

My, what a wonderful place that store¬ 
room was, thought Twinkly Eyes, as he 
shoved past the loosened window screen. 
He sniffed about him in the darkness. 
Prom somewhere away wp high above his 
, head came that luscious odor of maple sugar 
; he had come to crave. Clambering up the 
shelves (from which he knocked a jumble 
of things that fell with a crash to the floor), 
he had just found the syrup can when the 
shelf itself gave way beneath his weight, 
and down he came upon the flour barrel. 
This he over-turned in his frenzy of surprise, 
and had he but known it, the flour whitened 
him from top to toe. 

The Hired Man, hearing the commotion, 
came downstairs to see what it was all about, 
a candle in his hand. Now the Hired Man 
believed in ghosts, of which he was terribly 
afraid. Seeing but faintly in the flickering 
candle light, he beheld a whitened form with 
gleaming eyes which rose inquiringly to its 
hind legs at this moment. 


TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE 


81 


With a yell of terror, the Hired Man 
dropped his candle and ran back to bed, 
where he lay trembling till day-break with 
the covers pulled over his head. 

A few days later the farmer bade the 
Hired Man keep an eye out for the fox that 
every night had come to rob the hen¬ 
house. 

Without saying a word about it to the 
Boy, the Hired Man decided to chain 
Twinkly Eyes inside the hen-yard, believ¬ 
ing that no fox would come near with the 
little bear on guard. 

Now Twinkly Eyes had often watched as 
Old Man Red Fox came tripping down to get 
a hen for the pups at home, and the little 
bear had looked on with mouth watering. 
(For he too loved the chicken bones that the 
Boy saved for him, every time the farmer 
had a chicken dinner.) 

To-night the old fox came as usual. 
“Gr-r-r,” said Twinkly Eyes, as he heard 
the thief within the hen-house (whence he 
had crawled through the tunnel he had dug 
beneath the fence). But Old Man Red Fox, 


82 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


minding not one particle, grabbed the fattest 
hen in sight and set all the flock to cackling 
and fluttering about in terror. 

The noise brought the Hired Man on the 
rmi,—for he had been up late that night 
treating a sick horse. 

The instant Old Man Eed Fox heard the 
flying feet approaching, he dropped his hen 
and ran,—for the white hen would be an 
easy mark for a man with a gun. 

Flinging open the hen-house door, the 
Hired Man dragged out the injured fowl, 
which flopped squawking about the hen- 
yard, its torn feathers flying. Twinkly 
Eyes, alarmed at the strange commotion, and 
seeing the Hired Man’s gaze fastened upon 
him accusingly, (for circumstantial evidence 
was all against him), leapt the fence, jerking 
so hard on the stake to which his chain was 
fastened that he uprooted it and dragged it 
with him. 

Had he realized he was free, he would 
have made for the surrounding hills. The 
Hired Man, feeling himself to blame, would 
probably have said nothing about it, for he 


TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE 


83 


was a cowardly fellow, besides, be longed to 
be rid of the bear. But the dragging chain 
still made Twinkly feel a prisoner, and his 
main thought was that he would be blamed 
for the commotion in the hen-house. 

Instead, he ran and climbed into the first 
hole he saw, which happened to be the boy’s 
ground floor window, and crawled under the 
bed. 

The Boy, half roused from his slumbers, 
(more by the sound of the chain than the 
soft padding of the little bear), began to 
dream. And the bear, finding it dark and 
peaceful, also fell asleep after a time, and his 
snores issued rhythmically from beneath the 
bed. 

The Boy’s dreams were anything but 
pleasant. He ureamed that he was a cave 
man, and that some wild beast lay hidden in 
his cave,—a dragon who snorted fire, and 
whom he would have to oust with only his 
club for a weapon. 

Twinkly Byes was also dreaming. (And 
had he but known it, his dream was of the 
days of dinosaurs, the queer creatures who 


84 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


peopled North America three million years 
ago. Was it the memory of his three-mil¬ 
lion-times great grandfather, handed down 
to him from those days, to remind him that 
bears had not always been the strongest 
creatures on the continent?—Or was it the 
picture of past times sent him by some sprite, 
some fairy spirit as mischievous as himself, 
to tease him ?) 

First came a dinosaur as big as a house, 
—an elephant-like creature, with the tail of 
a lizard, and horns like a cow, and an extra 
horn on his nose for good measure. For a 
mouth he wore a beak like a turtle’s, and 
each foot had three toes, each toe ending in 
a hoof. To make the monster more fright¬ 
ful, he wore an enormous up-standing collar 
of the same horny skin that covered him. 

Next Twinkly dreamed of fleeing a some¬ 
what smaller dinosaur, but one he feared 
even more, as he was covered with horny 
scales that stuck out sharply all over his 
back. 

In his dream, he ran from this new terror 
just as the mice had always run from him. 


TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE 85 

It was a new experience to be, not the chaser, 
but the chased, (or chasee, as one might 
say). 

But no sooner had he escaped this dinosaur 
than along came one that stood on his hind 
legs like a man, only he was as tall as a tree, 
and dragged behind him a long tail like a 
lizard’s, and his face wore a huge duck’s 
bill. 

Twinkly squealed with fright, and in his 
efforts to escape this awful creature, he woke 
himself clear up, and went scrambling 
around the room like mad in search of the 
way out. 

The Boy, roused at last, was petrified with 
surprise at the dark shape that went clank¬ 
ing over his bed and back again; but he 
quickly recognized the little rascal, and that 
said rascal must be taken back to the barn¬ 
yard. 

Needless to say, both the boy and the bear 
were glad they had only been dreaming, and 
that the days of dinosaurs and cave-men 
were past and gone. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE DANCING BEAR 

A FTER that adventure, Twinkly tried 
hard to escape from Valley Farm. 
First he tried burying his chain, but al¬ 
ways it came clanking after him. Then he 
dug a tunnel under the fence, but the chain 
brought him up short, not far from the other 
side. He played ’possum, hoping they 
would think him dead, and so take the chain 
from his neck, but it did not work. He re¬ 
mained a beloved prisoner. 

Not that he was altogether unhappy,— 
much as he longed for the seclusion of the 
forest. But he did long to climb trees, and 
go fishing with his claws, and swimming and 
exploring. 

There were times when he had glorious 
boxing-matches with the Boy. At first the 
Boy would challenge him. Later he came 
86 


THE DANCING BEAR 


87 


to challenging the Boy to these merry bouts, 
—and if he sometimes seemed a little rough, 
he didn’t mean to be. The hand that fed 
him he knew for his friend. 

Had Twinkly been even a year younger,— 
say, a four months cub,—the Boy could eas¬ 
ily have trained him to carry in the fire¬ 
wood, and do lots of cunning tricks. 

He did not have to be taught to charge 
the Hired Man, with a “woof—woof— 
woof!” every time he got the chance. And 
though he would not have dared attack him, 
he thought it lots of fun to see the fellow 
run. 

Once only did the Boy try to scold him for 
it. It only made the sensitive captive sullen. 
For like most self-reliant folk, he was proud, 
and his pride was hurt by the scolding. 

The little bear also took to climbing the 
bam roof, (when his chain was fastened 
near enough), for the fun of tobogganing off 
it “belly-bumps.” 

One day a traveling showman arrived,— 
a scowling little black eyed man to whom 
Twinkly took an instinctive dislike. 


88 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

(Instinct, you know, is the wisdom that 
comes, not of your own experience, but that 
of your ancestors, from whom you have in¬ 
herited your temper and the shape of your 
nose. Instinct often tells you something 
that you need to know for your own safety. 
It did in this case, as we shall see.) 

Limping along behind the Showman, on 
the end of a little chain, came a dancing 
bear. Twinkly watched as the Showman 
put the poor old fellow through his paces. 

The show bear afterwards told Twinkly 
all about it. He had to dance, he said, or he 
would be starved and beaten, even when his 
feet were tired and sore, and he felt any¬ 
thing but in a dancing mood. 

He had been caught as a tiny cub, and 
trained to travel about from one back-woods 
settlement to another with this man, and 
dance for crowds of staring people, who 
would then give the Showman money when 
he passed his tambourine. 

The Show Bear was so starved and old 
that his sides were hollow and he was con¬ 
tinually trying to lie down and take a nap. 


THE DANCING BEAR 


89 


But this the Showman never allowed him to 
do, (except when night came). 

“I’ll be glad to die,” the Show Bear told 
Twinkly Eyes, “and go to the Happy Hunt¬ 
ing Grounds. For I’ve had enough of this 
kind of life, I can assure you.”—And that 
night his spirit did depart his poor, tired 
body,—so that the next day the Showman 
said he was dead, and only Twinkly 
knew that it was only the furry house in 
which his spirit had lived for so many years 
that lay there, while the real bear had gone 
to a place where he could be a wild bear in 
the wild woods, as he had always longed to 
be. 

But now the Showman began to look at 
Twinkly Eyes in a way that made the little 
bear most uneasy. To the Boy he offered 
money, saying he needed a new dancing 
bear; but the Boy indignantly refused it. 

That night Twinkly Eyes heard the Show¬ 
man bargaining with the Hired Man,—and 
again he felt uneasy. 

But the Boy also heard. 

“Just wait!” the Showman urged, “Wait 


90 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


till the family is asleep, and I’ll take him 
away in the dark, and we’ll make things look 
as if he had escaped.—Oh, not to-night.— 
They’d be suspicious.—Wait a week or so. 
I’ll pretend to go away in the morning, then 
some night I ’ll slip back here and take him, 
if you’ll just do as I say, and no one will be 
the wiser,” and they whispered together for 
several minutes, and he gave the Hired Man 
money. 

All the next day the Boy was extremely 
thoughtful and extremely worried. Just 
why he did not tell his father about it, we do 
not know. After all, a Boy is apt to make 
mistakes. For his father could surely have 
thought of something to do about it. 

The Boy did have a pretty good idea of his 
own, though. 

“Father,” he begged, “may I have two or 
three days to go fishing? I’ve got the wood 
all split for a week ahead, and everything. 
And this isn’t a busy season, is it ? And I ’ll 
bring a fine string of fish, you see if I don’t.” 

His father, who knew the Boy worked 
hard, consented. 


THE DANCING BEAR 


91 


“And may I take my bear?” be asked. 

“If you like.” 

The next bour was joyous with prepara¬ 
tion for tbe camping trip. First—and most 
important—there was a back-pack to be 
filled with bread and butter, and bacon 
packed in a frying pan, and other things, 
especially a fine lot of little red apples that 
they both loved. The Boy also took a 
blanket, an axe, and a handful of matches, 
and of course a trout rod and a can for bait. 

Then with a kiss for his mother, he 
grasped Twinkly’s chain and they were off. 

All day they tramped through the Sep¬ 
tember woods,—first down the Old Logging 
Road, past Pollywog Pond, then down the 
trail to Rapid River, and half way to Lone 
Lake. (Twinkly Byes could have made it 
in half the time alone and freed from his 
chain.) 

A woodbine hung in a scarlet canopy over 
the seedling maple under which they 
lunched, its purple berries pendant from the 
bent limbs, where Twinkly could reach them 
for dessert. Others of these graceful vines 


92 


TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


clothed the tall trunks about them with the 
gold and flame of approaching autumn,— 
as did also that imitation woodbine, the 
three-fingered poison ivy. 

The smaller birds were starting South in 
flock after joyous flock. 

Night found them camping in a little pine- 
clad knoll, where the Boy made a cheery 
fire,—(that is, cheery to him, but most dis¬ 
tasteful to the little bear),—and fried some 
bacon. 

Long they feasted, (for Twinklv got the 
pan to lick), and the sun went down, and the 
stars, which had been unseen all day in the 
sunlight, began to show up to good advantage 
in the darkened sky. 

At dawn, Fleet Foot the doe and the spot¬ 
ted fawns stared, amazed, at the strange 
spectacle of a boy and a bear sleeping side 
by side, the Boy’s head pillowed on the furry 
back of his pet. 

Then their big eyes widened to an even 
stranger sight. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A FIGHT FOR A FRIEND 

U NK WUNK, the porcupine, had come 
grunting hungrily about camp that 

night. 

Smelling the bacon, (which he craved 
above all things), he had gone nosing into 
the open knap-sack after some, with the re¬ 
sult that he had spilled the little red apples 
all over himself. 

The tiny apples impaled themselves on his 
quills, and the sight that greeted the eyes of 
Fleet Foot,—and later of the hoy and the 
bear,—was that of a big, black, pin-cushiony 
hump that gnawed the root of a tree, with 
little red apples apparently growing all 
down his back. 

Well it was for both Twinkly Eyes and his 
boy friend that they could begin the day with 
laughter. Their troubles were not yet over, 

93 


94 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

—though just what brand of trouble would 
assail them next, they little dreamed. 

They breakfasted, the boy on bread and 
bacon, the bear on a great cluster of honey 
mushrooms that he found growing on a de¬ 
caying log. 

By and by the Boy caught some fish, and 
both comrades felt like having another 
breakfast. 

Both, being pioneer backwoods dwellers, 
were conscious of little pairs of eyes that 
peeped at them from trail and tree top. 
Now a grouse would rise before them with a 
thunderous roar of wings. Now a striped 
chipmunk would sit watching them immov¬ 
ably, or a gray squirrel would go scurrying 
through the brush with as much noise as a 
hound would make. Red squirrels scolded 
the intruders. Soft, white trimmed flying 
squirrels darted from tree-trunk to tree- 
trunk with pretty grace. Musk-rats darted 
busily about a pond they passed, making 
their mud tepees safe and snug for winter. 
A huge antlered deer swam Rapid River, his 
great eyes questioning the strange spectacle 


A FIGHT FOE A FRIEND 95 

of two such: friends as the boy and the bear. 

A bob-cat followed at a distance, perhaps 
merely curious, perhaps anxious to see them 
safely out of his home territory. And in the 
open spaces, a million crickets sang among 
the asters and golden rod. It was certainly 
getting to look like home to the little black 
bear, and his heart beat high with the hope 
that he might not have to go back as he had 
come. 

He saw many wood rats he longed to chase. 
About the size of the barn rats at the Yalley 
Farm, they had long, hairy tails and great, 
listening ears, and their fur was of that same 
reddish tinge that serves to camouflage so 
many of the furry folk against the red-brown 
soil,—from tiny Shirr Chipmunk to Fleet 
Foot, the doe. 

Once the Boy was startled by a family of 
these rats leaping out from almost under his 
feet as he all but stepped on the nest of sticks 
and bark, in which they had been snoozing 
away the sun-lit hours till night should come 
and make it safe for them to venture forth. 

He also glimpsed a white-footed deer 


96 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

mouse, with, alert big ears, and cheeks stuffed 
like a squirrel’s with seeds or insects for his 
winter stores. 

They had come to a rocky slope, and the 
Boy had heard a faint, kitten-like mewing 
from some hidden cavern. He really ought 
to have known better than to hunt for lynx 
kittens.—Any forest mother will defend her 
young, and how could Madame Wild-cat 
know that the Boy meant them no injury ?— 
No, it was decidedly a rash thing to do. 
Twinkly Eyes knew it was rash, and he tried 
to tell the Boy, by holding back and tugging 
on his chain. He even sat down on his tail 
and refused to budge. But the Boy did not 
understand. 

Suddenly there was a screech, as Madame 
Lynx flew at the Boy, claws out. 

In that instant the little bear proved his 
friendship to the hand that fed him. He 
also showed what kind of loyalty a bear con¬ 
siders his friend’s due. Before Madame 
Wild-cat could attack the Boy, Twinkly 
Eyes had launched himself upon her with a 


A FIGHT FOR A FRIEND 


97 


swinging blow of his powerful fore-paw. 
That stopped her for a moment, only. Be¬ 
fore the Boy could scramble out of reach, 
the giant cat, nostrils dilating with rage, flew 
screaming at the pair of them,—for the Boy 
still grasped the chain. 

There was no time for a polite boxing- 
match, Twinkly Eyes decided. His eyes 
glowing red with rage, he closed with her, 
tooth and claw, ears laid back tight to his 
head to be out of harm’s way if possible, his 
chesty growl vying with her caterwauling. 

“Wa-ah!—Gr-r-r!” he snarled painfully, 
as the fur—both black and tawny—began to 
fly. A raking gash of the lynx’s claws cut 
his side. But there was blood on his jaws, 
—her blood, not his. 

Then Madame Lynx had had enough of it. 
With a hissing “uff!” she leapt to a tree top, 
where she glowered down on them, stub tail 
twitching wrathfully, eyes fairly shooting 
sparks, as her pupils dilated and contracted 
in her nervous tension. 

The Boy was glad to note that she did not 


98 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

seem much hurt. Nor was Twinkly Eyes,— 
though he had fallen to licking his wound. 
His fur was thick, and the lynx’s claws had 
not gone so deep but that it would heal 
quickly. 


CHAPTEK XVII 


THE ESCAPE 

T HE little black bear had won! 

Madame Lynx gave one last yowl, 
and retired into her cave. She was really 
more scared than hurt. 

“Good work, old partner!” said the Boy. 
“You deserve your freedom, that’s sure,— 
and I’m going to give it to you right this 
minute.—I’ve known all along that I ought 
to.” 

Twinkly didn’t understand the words, but 
he did the tone, and the lump of maple sugar 
that the Boy held out to him. 

Then with a snap his collar was off, and 
with it the hateful chain. “Good-bye, old 
scout, ’ ’ said the Boy. “ I’d like to keep you, 
but I know you’d rather go.” 

The little bear was already sprinting away 
through the trees, leaping and dodging in 

99 


100 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

and out among them just like Old Man Red 
Fox. Because what if the Boy should 
change his mind ? And it wasn’t more than 
the wink of an eye before he was clear out of 
sight. 

He had fought for his friend, and he had 
been given the freedom he longed for, and he 
simply couldn’t wait a minute longer to in¬ 
spect his range. 

What had happened in his absence ? 
How were all the wood folk that he had left 
so many moons before ? Then it had been 
spring. The first blueberries were only just 
ripe on the hill-sides that sloped to the sun. 
Now it was blackberry season, and he had a 
pretty good idea where he was likely to end 
the day. 

On through the good green woods he raced. 
Already the maples were turning red under 
the white-fleeced sky, and the scarlet seed 
pods of the over-grown jack-in-the-pulpits 
showed where he might expect to find the 
great, onion-shaped roots that he loved. 
Here was a clump of sumac in velvety crim¬ 
son seed pods standing up like candle flames, 


THE ESCAPE 


101 


and there a thorny bush drooping with ripe 
barberries. Even the Solomon’s seals 
were aflame with fruit. The time of 
the autumn’s feast was at hand, and he could 
begin fattening up against the winter’s 
sleep. But still he raced on, too happy to 
stop for food. 

In the little wild meadows that he crossed, 
the soft purple of wild asters tinted the bor¬ 
ders of the dried brook beds, just as the In¬ 
dian summer haze tinted the farther hills. 
The crickets sang their invitations to lie 
down in the long brown grass and take a nap 
in the sunshine, but he could not stop for 
that. On, on he galloped on his noiseless 
feet. 

At last he reached the rim of Lone Lake. 

Mother Black Bear was not there, but the 
Ospreys were still diving hawk-like for fish, 
and Baldy the eagle was still circling around 
overhead trying to bully them into dropping 
their catch. Only this time there were three 
young Ospreys fishing too, and Mother Os¬ 
prey flew about screaming warnings and in¬ 
structions as Baldy came swooping down to 


102 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

bully the one who had just made his catch. 

“Just like old times,’’ thought the little 
bear, his black eyes twinkling more than 
ever. 

At sight of Twinkly Eyes, Baldy gave a 
scream of rage. “If he drops that fish, it’s 
mine,” he rasped harshly. 

“It is, if you catch it before it hits the 
ground,” rumbled Twinkly Eyes in the 
depths of his yearling chest. And he sat 
down to watch the fun. 

Suddenly there was a movement on the 
shore, and cross old Mrs. Snapper, the giant 
turtle, came slowly lumbering up the bank. 

“Hello, there,” called Twinkly Eyes. 
“I declare, I’m so glad to be back, I’m glad 
to see every one I meet.” (And he meant 
it.) 

“Well, I’m not glad to see you, I can as¬ 
sure you,” said Mrs. Snapper crossly. 
“And I don’t believe many of the wood folk 
will be, either. We surely hoped something 
had happened to you.” 

“Oh, there, now, I expect I have as many 
friends as you have in these woods,” 


THE ESCAPE 


103 


laughed Twinkly Eyes. “ Perhaps more. 
And most of them have a sense of humor. 
I am mostly a vegetarian, you know, and 
they tease me as often as I tease them. If I 
do chase some of them, like Shirr Chipmunk, 
or Madame Wood Hare, they know they can 
out-run me, and from the way Shirr always 
sits up and sauces me, I fancy he enjoys a 
race as much as I do.” 

“All right, but if you go chasing me, I’ll 
bite your toes off,—that I will,” hissed Mrs. 
Snapper.—She came a little nearer, snap¬ 
ping her jaws together warningly. 

“You are courting trouble, if you try to 
bite,” said Twinkly Eyes. “I don’t believe 
in going out of my way to pick a quarrel, 
but I’m certainly not anxious to have my 
toes snapped off. ’ ’ He had come so near los¬ 
ing his paw in the trap that he knew just 
what it would feel like. “But I think I 
know what ails you, Mrs. Snapper. You 
need a chance to think it over,”—the 
next thing the big snapping-turtle knew, he 
had slipped the long claws of his right fore¬ 
paw under the edge of her shell, just far 


104 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 


enough back to be out of reach of her jaws. 
Then he turned her over on her back, where 
all she could do was to kick out wildly with 
all four feet in her effort to turn right side 
up again. And there he left her, with a 
merry twinkle in his eye, to mend her man¬ 
ners. 

Where, meantime, was Mother Black 
Bear ? Twinkly sniffed at the stump at the 
cross trails, but found no message of her 
having passed that way. He peered into 
the cave on the slope of Beaver Brook, but it 
had not even been slept in for a long, long 
time. He studied the tracks on every trail 
that led down to Lone Lake, but the ground 
was hard and dry, and he learned nothing, 
with eyes or nose, that would tell her where¬ 
abouts. 

Then he sat down to reason it out. Why, 
of course! Why had he not thought of that 
in the first place ? This was blackberry sea¬ 
son, and she would surely be feasting in some 
berry patch. There was that big one at the 
end of the Lake. The very place!— 

No sooner was his mind made up than he 


THE ESCAPE 


105 


was off again, racing noiselessly on his furry 
feet. Then a sound made his ears prick for¬ 
ward. It was Chetwoof, the big bear of the 
neighboring range, and his voice was wrath¬ 
ful.—What right had he in Mother Black 
Bear’s berry patch 0 ? 

Then came the frightened squeal of one of 
the wee new cubs, and Twinkly Eyes re¬ 
doubled his speed. He was needed in that 
berry patch! 


CHAPTER XVIII 


m THE BERRY PATCH 

N OW bears are like people in respecting 
the rights of others. 

As a rule, each family of bears has its own 
range, and will not intrude on a neighbor’s 
range. This range belonged to Mother 
Black Bear. But there are thieves among 
humans, and sometimes there are thieves 
among bears. 

Chetwoof knew he had no right in Mother 
Black Bear’s berry patch. But he knew, 
too, that she was alone, with two cubs to pro¬ 
tect. Therefore he simply came over and 
helped himself. 

That wasn’t so bad. So long as there were 
berries enough for all, she wouldn’t have 
minded, except for one thing. He wanted 
them all for himself. He was actually try¬ 
ing to drive her from her own home grounds. 
106 


IN THE BERRY PATCH 


107 


Just now he stood in the middle of the 
finest clump of bushes, gobbling the ripe 
fruit in great handfuls, and the wee cubs 
were afraid to come near. He even growled 
at Mother Black Bear herself unless she kept 
her distance. 

Had she been alone, she might have fought 
off the intruder. But so long as he did not 
actually hurt the cubs, she had no mind to 
risk a fight. For if she got hurt, what 
would become of her babies'? (How she 
wished their father would come back! But 
he had already gone prospecting up Mount 
Olaf.) 

In other words, Chetwoof was having 
things all his own way when Mother Black 
Bear’s yearling cub arrived on the scene. 

“How is this?” growled Twinkly Eyes. 
“You wouldn’t let me pick blueberries on 
your range, and now you are trying to keep 
us off our own range.” 

“Young man,” rumbled Chetwoof, “you 
are just about big enough to spank. ” And 
he advanced with paw up-raised ready to 
give him a cuff. 


108 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

But Mother Black Bear was now re-in- 
forced by her half-grown son, and she was 
in a far better position to drive the big bear 
away. With a roar of wrath she rose to her 
full height, teeth bared and paws raised for 
the boxing match that she meant should set¬ 
tle the matter. Twinkly also rose, with 
bared teeth,—and so did the wee cubs, 
though the little mimics stayed a good, safe 
distance behind their mother. 

In another moment the three of them were 
at it. Chetwoof retreated, but Mother 
Black Bear still came on, Twinkly close be¬ 
side her.—You never heard such a snarling 
and growling on the part of the two big 
bears, and such squealing and whining on 
the part of the two little bears, and such a 
combination of all these sounds as now is¬ 
sued from the middle sized bear! 

Chetwoof watched for the moment when 
he might take Mother Black Bear off guard, 
and Mother Black Bear watched Chetwoof, 
first one paw, then the other, raised to deal 
the blow. Chetwoof got in a left-handed up¬ 
per cut that made his opponent dizzy. 


IN THE BERRY PATCH 


109 


With a gasp of rage, she closed with him, 
neatly dodging his next thrust,—jumping- 
back, then closing again,—always guarding 
her face with one arm while striking with the 
other. 

(Later the two wee cubs gave an imitation 
boxing match, bristling and growling, and 
pretending to be terribly in earnest. But 
now they watched more than half scared out 
of their wits.) 

But the end of it all was that Chetwoof 
was driven back to his own range for trying 
to hog theirs. 

Then Mother Black Bear, with an affec¬ 
tionate rub of her cheek against Twinkly’s 
furry jowl, began asking questions. “I 
knew you’d been caught in that trap,” she 
said. 6 ‘ I found a bit of the fur off your paw. 
But when I smelled human foot-steps all 
around the place, I thought surely something 
dreadful had become of you.” 

“That’s what I thought, too, at first,” said 
Twinkly Eyes. “But here I am, back again, 
none the worse for the experience. And 
now I know how to appreciate my freedom.” 


110 TWINKLY EYES AT VALLEY FARM 

And he shuddered as he thought of the 
traveling showman and the poor old dancing 
bear who had had such a wretched life of it. 

Between mouthfuls he told Mother Black 
Bear all about it, while the wee cubs listened 
with ears pricked up their sharpest, the ber¬ 
ries all but forgotten. 

“ Strange how humans differ, ” mused 
Mother Black Bear. ‘ ‘ The Man that set the 
trap would have killed you, but the Boy was 
your friend, and the traveling showman had 
kept his bear a prisoner all these years on the 
end of a chain, and starved and abused him 
till he was ready to die.—Well, you’d better 
look out that he doesn’t come trailing you 
here. Mercy! If he should try to capture 
my cubs! I’d tear him to pieces before I’d 
let him take them. ’ ’ And she began turning 
her head uneasily from side to side as she 
tested the breeze. “Just let him hurt my 
cubs!” she growled. 

“Well, he’s not going to capture me, I can 
tell you that!” declared Twinkly Eyes. 
For even kind treatment and good things to 
eat, and the jokes he had managed to play, 


IN THE BERRY PATCH 


111 


had not made him happy at Valley Farm. 

Then one evening found him padding 
softly down to Pollywog Pond for a meal of 
the wild grapes that grew on the hill-side 
just back of Pollywog Pond. 

It was a dark, cloudy night, and he felt 
safer than if there had been a moon. Pres¬ 
ently his ears pricked to a strange sound. 
The Boy was playing his harmonica again. 
Twinkly rose to his haunches, fore-paws 
raised in a way he had, his head held sidewise 
while he listened. Memories of the fun and 
feasting at Valley Farm flitted like a dream 
through his furry head. 

Then came the memory of the clanking 
chain, and the cage-like repentance box, and 
the traveling showman.—Like one who 
struggles out of a nightmare, he dashed away 
to make sure he really had his freedom. 

Still, on many a moonlight night, Whoo- 
Whoo, the owl, blinked his round eyes at a 
little black bear who sat on the hill-top, lis¬ 
tening to the far, faint strains of music from 
the Boy’s harmonica. 


THE END 

























































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